Ergonomic studies relating to keyboard and terminal positioning have lead to the development of a great number of adjustable workstations and desks. Although such stations tend to provide a reasonable degree of relative vertical movement between surfaces respectively supporting a keyboard and a monitor or VDU, there has generally been a deficiency in the availability of relative horizontal movement between these two surfaces.
In order to compensate for this deficiency new workstations are being produced, and old workstations retrofitted with mechanisms which allow such relative horizontal movement.
The prior art workstations generally include a height adjustment mechanism extending between the two work surfaces. In order to allow relative horizontal movement between these surfaces the adjustment mechanism must be disconnected from one of the surfaces to allow the interpositioning of an adaptor therebetween.
Such adaptors include a metal plate for fixed abutment with the bottom of one of the surfaces. Integrally projecting from the plate are a pair of opposed formations spaced apart for slidably engaging an existing complementary formation on the height adjustment mechanism. Consequently, the adaptor must be custom made for each particular application. Furthermore, the formations on both the plate and adjustment mechanism are prone to wear and distortion. More particularly, the formations on the adjustment mechanism are not designed for such mounting which can lead to failure of the formations.
Those workstations produced with horizontal adjustment means necessitate strict quality control during manufacturing due to the tolerances required to ensure that jamming does not occur. However, only small amounts of use causes wear which is sufficient to render such a workstation unsatisfactory.